Saturday, May 14, 2011

Related frustrations.

I am making progress on the list, but I haven't made any blog posts on it lately. I'm hoping to get a couple done tomorrow, but this is fresh in my mind, and I feel I need to get it out there. The following isn't really a thing, but it's related to the list, so it belongs here.

I had two of the most discouraging moments tonight, on a long drive home with my dad. Basically, I ended up talking about my singing lessons a little bit (I had my second singing lesson on Friday, which was quite delightful), and my dad made some comments about how nice this is "for now" and "if your job situation changes, you'll have to stop your singing lessons", etc. and it just generally implying that this was a passing fancy (been singing since high school, btw), and that I wasn't going to keep up with that. Overall, it really pissed me off. He then went on to talk about how he thought I should have pursued this a long time ago and how he thought I had potential.

The second moment was when he started saying something along the lines of "about your list," which continued on and contained phrases like "double edged sword," and it can "feel great because you accomplish some things, but that it can become an obsession, too, and you have to be careful, bullshitbullshit." This is such horseshit.

Every time I've been involved in the arts in some way, he's just so damn concerned that I'm somehow going to get in the way of making a living. He doesn't seem to think I could make money, therefore it's not worth pursuing. Truth is, if I had focused on some of these things when I should have, I could be good enough to feed myself.

He's been talking to me like this all my life. All I've ever had is potential, and I've never felt really supported by him. It's as though he's worried that if I stick my neck out, and work really hard at something, I'll end up being disappointed. He's a good person and he means well, but at times like this, it's difficult not to see him as an asshole.